Oklahoma State University multi-disciplinary scientists are teaming up to research how cover crops can improve the environmental impacts of cattle foraging.
“We need to find new approaches to beef cattle production systems that are economically beneficial to producers, and ideally, would have an environmental benefit as well,” said Andrew Foote, associate professor in the OSU Department of Animal and Food Sciences. “The industry is making great progress with improving methane emissions from beef cattle, but we are lacking in improvement with nitrogen emissions.”
Fertilizing crops and cattle foraging on harvested cropland cause methane and nitrogen emissions. “That’s why we came up with this research project to look at using legume cover crops in the summer to fix nitrogen in the soil to minimize the amount of fertilizer producers need to put down for planting wheat in the fall,” Foote said. “We want to see if we can better use wheat cropland between harvesting winter wheat in the spring and planting it again in the fall. On the economic side, could you get another grazing period over the summer or more hay using these four-season cover crops? Then there is the environmental benefit of fixing the nitrogen into the soil.”
Read more about this research: https://agresearch.okstate.edu/news/articles/2025/osu-researchers-seeking-environmental-solutions-through-cover-cropping.html
SOURCE: NAFB News Service
